I’m back from a trip to England! And Wales! We drove on the other side of the street and walked along the tops of bluffs on footpaths and saw the Dr. Who Experience and had cream tea and got really familiar with a few stops of the Underground and saw Book of Mormon and opened Kinder Eggs and gawked at cheese in Cheddar and watched the path emerge from the water from the top of Saint Michael’s Mount and looked the wrong way for traffic before crossing the street. But mostly our group spent time passing around a bad cold, which I was unlucky enough to have for the days we were in London where it was cold enough to snow and yet there was no way I was going to take a whole precious day to sit and be warm and still indoors.

Since we now have Uniqlo and Lush and Muji shops and Boots aisle in Target here in the US it’s harder to find new and fascinating things in the UK, but we succeeded! Behold something called “Mansize tissues”, shown above next to a regular sized tissue. The Mansize tissues are big, almost hanky sized, and I love them and I wish we had them here in the US. So, who knows somebody in the tissue industry and how quickly can we get these things here in the US and can we rename them something less sexist but still offensive like Texas Tissues or Supersize Tissues? Anyhow, they made having a cold slightly less miserable.

After out Reidel O wine tumblers finally all cracked I set out to find wine glasses that were perfect and landed on these Reidel Vivant Pinot Noir glasses sold at Target. We live near pinot growing country and find ourselves drinking that most often but I think this shape works just fine for all varietals, we don’t get too fussy around here. I looked at all the fancy brands at various kitchen stores but kept coming back to surreptitiously open a box of these in the aisle at Target to hold them.

These glasses have everything I like: a dramatic bowl, a nice thin lip, and they are easy to replace. They are a nice height too, the stem isn’t too long (I tend to knock over taller wine glasses) or so short you cannot get your fingers around it when you’re feeling like holding the glass properly. We bought ours in a set of 8 and all but one has held up to hand washing for well over a year now. And most pleasingly, they made a beautiful ringing noise when clinked. For how much these get used in our house the price is worth it, and they were even more affordable because we used a few Target gift cards for the purchase.

There are a few video game developments that I’m pretty excited over. Ok, very excited over.

Dreamfall Chapters

Yes! Dreamfall Chapters, the continuing story of The Longest Journey, is up on Kickstarter and it’s still going! I am a big fan of the first two games in this series, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. The creator, Ragnar Tornquist, has started up a company and this will be their first project. They’ve already passed the $1 million mark and as a result the game will be available on extra platforms and there will be more content. I’m very excited to find out the fate of April Ryan and I have hopes that we’ll see Zoe again. I’ve been a fan of adventure games going way back to King’s Quest 1 but the Dreamfall games tug at my heart in a special way.

Dreamfall Chapters is also up for a vote over at Steam Greenlight. If you’ve got an account over there do me a favor and vote it up? Thanks.

Kyntt Underground

I love the (free) Knytt games and played them to death so I was really pleased to find the newest one, Knytt Underground available in the Playstation store (it’s also available for Mac/PC/Linux). Knytt Underground keeps the 2-D screen by screen exploration and ads a map overlay. I’m only a few quests in and have been meaning to carve out some more time to explore and uncover more of the story. It’s also up on Steam Greenlight, throw it a vote? Please?

Borderlands 2

Small whine: There aren’t enough couch co-op games available. I don’t like playing FPSs alone, they get weirdly boring, but sitting on the couch next to Scott makes it really enjoyable. We’ve spent a good chunk of this winter playing split-screen Borderlands 2. It’s a vertical split screen and while at first it might be a little cramped I got used to it very quickly. None of the text or menus are obscured. We’ve been liking it so much that we took our time finishing the main storyline and now we’re revisiting everything to get all the Cult of the Vault symbols.

Adventure

If you missed Double Fine’s Kickstarter like I did (oops) you can still become a Slacker Backer and get the game while it’s in beta. I was late to play Psychonauts so it’s still new and fresh in my memory. Really really looking forward to Adventure. In the mean time I have yet to play The Cave.

So many games to look forward to! And I have not even gotten to how much I am anticipating The Last Gaurdian, it will arrive some day, we just have to keep believing.

I’m currently on a trip through the UK with a group of wonderful girlfriends. I’ve got posts lined up while I’m away but I’ll be posting pictures when I can over at Flickr, Instagram and Twitter (I’m notmartha at all those places) if you want to follow along. I’m depending in wi-fi in the evenings so updates met be spotty. Full reports soon!